Janel
Jacobson is soft-spoken woman, serious about her chosen craft. And
she’s made a successful career for herself in a difficult climate for
full-time artisans, cultivating a dedicated group of clients who zealously
collect her unusual work: delicate, painstakingly detailed,
delightfully
tiny carvings. She’s best known for
rendering
the
overlooked denizens of the natural
landscape—tree frogs, salamanders,
dragonflies—into tiny, intricately carved marvels. These aren’t frivolous or
cutesy by any stretch, but rather tricky little netsuke
carvings, sculptures evocative of the Zen traditions and Japanese artistic
heritage that inspire them.


 


Each little piece surprises the eye and delights the
hand with texture and hidden detail. At first glance from one direction you
see merely a pea pod. Look more closely, and a wee frog is hidden among the
peas. These little “twists” as she calls them are part and parcel of the
netsuke tradition she’s
drawing from. When asked about it, Jacobson asks, “Well, isn’t that the way
nature works? Hiding something in there is just a reflection of the way things
are. I like to have
a
little surprise hidden in the carving, it
adds a little more depth to the piece.”


 


Netsuke, originally a Japanese
tradition, began as a way to create tiny carvings to serve as anchors securing
the cord of a pouch to clothing. These pieces were intended to be compact and
rounded so they could be slid underneath the obi (a cummerbund
in traditional Japanese attire). The netsuke would then stick
out the top, and the pouch would hang below. This kind of ornamentation was
something anyone could wear, which made the little carvings artistically
significant given that for much of Japanese history decorative fashion was
restricted to only the higher classes but for these little ornaments. There’s
a rich artisanal tradition in both Japan and the West dedicated to continuing
this obscure branch of carving, they’ve in turn cultivated a specialized breed
of collector.


 


Jacobson is a quiet soul, drawn to the woods around
her rural Minnesota home for the contemplative stillness they offer. She
explains lightly, “I like to do ‘hands and knees’ research. I go out at night
with a flashlight, and if I hear a noise, I’ll go out on my hands and knees
and try to find it. Once, I was picking raspberries and heard a tree frog. I
looked over my shoulder and there, at eye-level, I saw a tree frog sitting on
a raspberry leaf… How can you not wonder how it got there, over all those
brambles, to sit there? Why did it bother? I’ve had tree frogs around my home
for years, and I see them daily. But if you trouble to really look at them,
they’re wonderful, wonderful creatures. They sit on each other, loop
themselves over the branches. They’re so expressive—almost human, in a way—and
there’s so much variety. And they’re truly remarkable forms to carve in a
convincing way.”


 


She began her professional life as a potter, but her
interest migrated to fine detail work over the years until, finally, she gave
up clay altogether in favor of carving intricate, delicate pieces in
hardwood,
sometimes ivory, and
even
the occasional peach pit. She grew up a
city kid, but credits her mother with instilling in her a love of the natural
world and an eye for its secrets. Maybe that’s why she makes her home in the
small town of Sunrise, Minnesota. A far cry from the city of her youth, the
population of Sunrise is numbered in the hundreds rather than the thousands;
Jacobson’s country house lies at the north access to Wild River State Park,
about a 1 ¼ mile from the Saint Croix River. Remoteness suits Jacobson
perfectly, a fact evident in every lovingly carved detail of her pieces.



 


“I love exploring the details of frogs and leaves—I
would hate to have to simplify that detail in order to work on a larger scale.
I think that level of complexity and faithfulness to detail is what separates
my work from that of others. I was used to working with a small scale, simply
because I was spending a great deal of time on detail work for my pottery
early on anyway. That’s small work too, so it was a natural extension of the
kind of work I was already familiar with. Smaller scale allows for greater
complexity in the carving—I can produce a more intricately detailed work in a
reasonable period of time if I keep the size small. If I were to work in
larger scale, who knows how long a complex carving would take?”


 


And time really is of the essence for Jacobson’s
work. An especially detailed piece can take upwards of 200 hours to complete.
Accounting for that time and the hours spent on the business and marketing
side, not to mention web design and time spent photographing her work, means
that she keeps the price point pretty high for her work; her pieces usually
sell for between $10,000-$15,000 each.


 


In fact, as recognition for her craftsmanship has
grown and more collectors have found her over the years, she’s gradually
reduced her presence at craft shows. She only exhibits at a few prominent
national affairs these days: “The Smithsonian Craft Show, The American Craft
Exposition at Evanston, Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show are the three
largest shows in the country and the primary venues for my work now. I just
can’t afford to take the time to pack up and show locally anymore, but I do
miss seeing more of the public.”


 


Janel Jacobson’s success perhaps stems from her
patience and absolute commitment to exhausting the creative possibilities of
her chosen craft as much as it does to her carving talents. “I want to commit
myself to this path—to do this deeply and well as my vocation. I do have more
than one style going, it just takes a while to get from one to the other.”
Rather than try something altogether different, like
turned
wood carving for example, she prefers her
artwork to evolve slowly and organically, much like the patterns of the
natural world she depicts so meticulously. In fact, inspired by her friend and
fellow netsuke carver,
Jim
Kelso, she’s thinking of trying out a new
medium soon, a kind of patinated metal.


 


Ultimately, Jacobson’s carvings reflect her
enchantment with the humbler denizens of the natural world—the frogs and bugs
and little mammals that make their homes in the woods. She pays homage to
these creatures usually dismissed as common and shows them to us once again,
through her hands’ painstakingly detailed rendering, as magical. In the
process, she offers up a meditation on all things deemed too insignificant for
notice. “The young tree frogs look different from the older ones, you know.
They’re all individual. And if you take the time to look closely at them,
their eyes have gold flecks—they’re just magical creatures really. And the
loveliness of katydids making their nighttime music… it’s better than
television (laughs). It moves me, and I just want to share that with people.”



 


 

--Susannah Schouweiler

Janel Jacobson's website
See many more examples of her little masterpieces and find links to some great resources on netsuke carving and wood carving in general.

Susannah Schouweiler on mnartists.org

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